How it was installed Court of the Southern District of Georgia, in the summer of 2019, the owner and CEO of KS Engineering, Oleg Nikitin, who provides engineering services for sugar factories, decided to purchase a Vectra-40G power turbine in the USA, used in combination with a generator to generate electricity at autonomous industrial facilities. At the same time, the Dresser Rand turbine plant, located in Texas, US, could not sell the unit directly to Mr. Nikitin due to the ban imposed by the US government on the supply of its products to Russia.
According to the prosecution, in order to circumvent the sanctions, the buyer had to involve several intermediaries in the transaction. As a result, the price of the unit increased to $17.3 million.
Preparations for the deal went according to plan, but Dresser Rand executives contacted the FBI. At the direction of the intelligence service, the plant manager who oversaw the deal, as stated in the indictment, played the role of a “secret undercover agent” and ensured the arrest of all three intermediaries in August 2019. They, in turn, according to human rights activists, cooperated with the FBI, giving the agents exactly the testimony they needed, and thereby receiving more favorable terms of the deal for themselves and a reduction in terms. As part of the same cooperation, one of them called Oleg Nikitin in St. Petersburg and asked to fly to the USA. On September 19, 2019, he was detained in the city of Savannah (Georgia), where the deal was to be completed. Mr. Nikitin spent two years in the Chatham County (Savannah) GA Jail.
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